Cafe
Coffee Day brews a
new filter brand
BANGALORE:
The competition is brewing up in India’s packet filter-coffee market
which has been dominated by HLL’s Deluxe Green Label for years with
regional blends and Tata Coffee occupying the remaining shelf-space
in the country’s retail outlets.
A
new packet filter-coffee brand will be launched come September by the
Bangalore-based Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company (ABCL) which
owns the Cafe Coffee Day chain. To ensure comprehensive distribution,
ABCL has just inked an agreement with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) India. The
new product will be launched under the umbrella brand of Coffee Day.
ABCL
chairman V G Siddhartha told ET here today that the agreement with GSK
India had been signed in Delhi on Thursday, July 31. “ABCL’s initial
focus will be on the South Indian region where three-fourths of India’s
coffee consumption takes place. As per the agreement, GSK India will
be distributing our packet filter-coffee brand in South India through
its 1,000 strong sales-force, its 450 stockists and 90,000 retail outlets
in the region. ABCL will, in turn, distribute GSK India’s products like
Horlicks through our Coffee Day cafes and our 9,000 outlets like Coffee
Day Xpress and the Coffee Day Take-Away vending-machine retail points.”
India’s
filter-coffee market has been estimated at over 50,000 tonnes with 40
to 50% of that being packet filter-coffee where HLL’s Deluxe Green Label
has been the market leader for years with around 7,000 tonnes of a chicory-mix
filter-coffee blend. ABCL would, Mr Siddhartha said, be differentiating
its brand not so much on the basis of price as on a higher coffee and
lower chicory mix. ABCL’s target, he said, was to do around 3,000 tonnes
of packet filter-coffee powder within the next three to four years.
ABCL
has been present for a few years in the non-packet filter- coffee market
where its 350 outlets serve up Fresh & Ground coffee powder by roasting
and grinding in front of the consumer. “We already do some 2,300 tonnes
through our Fresh & Ground outlets. We expect our packet filter-coffee
powder sales to add to this and take us beyond the 5,000-tonne mark
within the next three to four years”, Mr Siddhartha said.
Asked
whether higher margins was the rationale for the move into packet filter-coffee,
Mr Siddhartha said, “We wanted to fill up the vacuum since we are present
in all other sections of the coffee market. We grow some of the country’s
finest coffees on 5,000 acres in the Chikmagalur district of Karnataka.
We are one of the country’s leading coffee exporters. We were the first
to get into the fine coffee-cafe segment through our Cafe Coffee Day
where we have 113 cafes all over the country at present. We are also
selling coffee through 6,000 vending machines. In fact, we have estimated
that some 250,000 consumers are trying our coffee every day in one form
or the other. The move into packet filter- coffee is, therefore, a logical
extension of our business where we are present everywhere else from
the cultivation of coffee to the final cup sampled by the consumer.”
RAGHU
KRISHNAN
TIMES
NEWS NETWORK
[ SATURDAY, AUGUST
02, 2003 05:45:49 AM ]
